A year ago, Emmanuel Macron asked for forgiveness from these auxilions engaged alongside the French army during the Algerian war. Since then, a law has provided compensation: out of the 21,273 files submitted, 2,577 have been approved for the moment.
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On these administrative offices, lots of files of files rest. Within these documents, piles years of suffering, decades of contempt and countless lives which, for France, barely counted. These broken destinies are those of the harkis, these fighters engaged in the French army, abandoned with their families by the State in the aftermath of the end of the Algerian war (1954-1962), and which were, so long, Unworthy enclosed in camps, prisons or forestry hamlets when they arrived in France. Since the end of March, 21,273 harkis – or their families – have submitted a compensation file, which will be studied by the Recognition and Repair Department of the National Office of Veterans and War Victims (ONACVG), a decentralized service in Caen (Calvados).
Indeed, for six months, auxiliary and their descendants can claim a repair – in a very limited framework – which was desired by Emmanuel Macron. A year ago, on September 20, 2021, at the Elysée, the President of the Republic asked them for forgiveness after having recognized “an abandonment of the French Republic” and then promised a law of recognition and reparation, which was promulgated at the start of the year, February 23.
However, for many harkis, this legislative text revolted them because they consider that it is not up to the suffering and other damages suffered. Even though this law recognizes “the unworthy conditions of the reception” reserved for the 90,000 harkis and their families who fled Algeria, the reparation concerns, in reality, some 50,000 people, those which have passed by ninety Twenty-nine structures identified from 1962 to 1975.
“Recognition, proof of love”
The amount of repair is also considered infamous: 2,000 euros for three months lived in a camp, 3,000 for a year, then 1,000 euros for each additional year. The total sum will not exceed 16,000 euros; This figure is based on the Tamazount jurisprudence of the Council of State (October 3, 2018), which ordered the State to pay 15,000 euros to a harki son under “material and moral damage”.
This delicate question of compensation is struggling to pass. Number of harkis – and their children – said it was “inexpensive paid for having experienced horror”, denouncing “colonial contempt”, regretting that the government has not sought to assess the damage suffered, s ‘finally offender that all the auxilions are not affected by the repair.
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